By Bonnie J. Sayles
In South Georgia, fans are passionate about high-school football, and nowhere is that passion more on display than when Fitzgerald and Irwin County face off each season. The two schools are separated by only about 10 miles, contributing to the intensity of the rivalry.
The Rotary Clubs of the two communities, Fitzgerald and Ocilla, get fully invested in their football rivalry with a 10-year tradition of meeting together the Monday that their respective football teams will play against each other that Friday, and this happened the week of Aug. 11, 2025.
Fitzgerald Head Coach Wesley “Tank” Tankersley and Irwin County Head Coach Larry Harold are both new in their respective jobs this season, and they appeared together Monday at a joint meeting of the Ocilla and Fitzgerald Rotary Clubs in Ocilla.
But even more exciting is the joint Rotary Club pre-game event: The Ocilla and Fitzgerald Rotary clubs have a decade-long tradition of a 10-plus-mile, stadium-to-stadium relay run on game day. The run begins at 4 p.m. Friday, Aug. 15. Fitzgerald club members meet at Jaycee Stadium in Fitzgerald and run with the game ball for about five miles to the Ben Hill/Irwin County line on Highway 129.
There, Ocilla Rotary Club members will take over and run the football to the Irwin County field, Buddy Nobles Stadium in Ocilla.
At 7 p.m., the presidents of both clubs, Austin Futch of Fitzgerald and Ocilla Police Chief Ashley Jones of Ocilla, and past District Governer Gary Smith start at a goal post and walk the football to the players after the coin toss and hand it to the referee for it to be used as the game football.
That game football, of course, is colored half purple and gold for Fitzgerald and half red and black for Irwin County.
Both coaches acknowledged that South Georgia high school football is different from what they are used to, and the cross-county rivalry makes the coaches and players excited and highly motivated.
“I called my son up in Kentucky and told him I’m going to this Rotary thing. He said, ‘That’s some Friday Night Lights stuff right there,’” said Tankersley, who is originally from Ellijay.
Irwin County’s Harold most recently coached football at Central High School in Lawrenceville, a school of about 2,800 kids. “We don’t do stuff like this (Rotary meeting with the coaches) in Atlanta,” Harold said.